REVIEW: Primal Hunger: Pendragon Gargoyles by Sydney Somers

Thank you for sending me your book for review. It was recommended as an erotic shapeshifting romance. I’ll confess that when I started it, I thought it was a werewolf book, but it is not. The Pendragon Gargoyles myth is based on cursed (or blessed) creatures that turn to stone during the daylight.

Kennedy Beaumont is a bartender at a popular club called Pendragon. She has the hots for one of the owners, Tristan Pendragon, but he’s never signaled a return interest and so Kennedy has just lusted from afar. One night she is targeted by an unknown danger and Tristan helps to save her. They are placed in such close proximity (her car) that Tristan’s longing for Kennedy cannot be suppressed. Much to Kennedy’s surprise, Tristan has lusted in a reciprocal, but silent manner as well.

The length of the book is category and I felt it was too short for the subject matter. Primal Hunger is the first book in the series, but it seemed like it was a middle book. There were references to other stories, occurrences and myths, none of which are resolved in this book. The myth that we are told is one that is a bit complicated. There are the Pendragons who shapeshift into animals as well as stone. There are fae, dragons, wraiths, and illusion casting shapeshifting gargoyles.

Tristan and his family owe allegiance to King Arthur. There are six daggers that are embued with magical abilities. In order to save his brother from eternal stone and to defend against Excalibur from falling into the hands of Morganna, Tristan and his family must recover the six daggers. There is no effort to advance the search for the daggers or progress the myth along. Instead the conflict is whether Tristan must give up one of his daggers to cancel out a death contract on Kennedy.

This leads me to the next problem I had with the story. Each section of the book ends a bit abruptly and the next section starts, chronologically, some time after the end of the last section. For me, it was confusing because I wasn’t always sure where I was in the story. For instance, one scene ends with the couple going to bed. The next scene, Tristan in the shower. I wasn’t sure if I had missed part of the story and kept having to go back to see if I had missed something. It took me a paragraph or so for me to orient myself. This is not to say that I need each minute of the day of a character’s life to be narrated for me, but these were abrupt time shifts.

This habit of fast forwarding us and then having the characters discuss, either in dialogue or narrative, the events that occurred in the time lapse made me detached from the story. I felt like I never got to see the real action of the story.

This sense of disorientation was compounded by the fact that I did feel that parts were missing. In one scene Kennedy heads to “Tristan’s room” even though she is new to the house and hadn’t been to his room before (and no one pointed her there). In another scene, Kennedy summons a fae with a charm that she took from Tristan’s room. We were never shown the scene where she found the charm, how she identified it as a charm or how she knew she could summon a Fae.

To be honest, Kennedy didn’t sound very bright at times. Her actions were impulsive and lacked intelligence. True, she seemed more motivated by feeling and emotion than sense, but lack of foresight isn’t always connected with lack of intelligence. I never really got a sense of who Kennedy was. (or who Tristan was for that matter). What motivated her? Was she logical, moved by emotion?

The erotic part of the erotic romance was very well done. The scenes were hot and tasteful. I really liked how you used the sexual tension to ratchet up the heat instead of just relying on the coupling. The erotic part of the story gets a B, but the other parts a C-.

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Comments

Hmm. Too bad. I’ve a thing for gargoyles (I blame it on the crappy Disney cartoon) but am possibly the only person who doesn’t like King Arthur plots. I’d risk it if it had a better grade, but as it is . . .

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